String Bend

A highly expressive playing technique employed on guitars and basses where a string is pushed to the side (across the fingerboard) while being fretted, in order to raise its pitch. The radius of the fingerboard largely determines how far a string can be bent before it “frets out” or stops sounding. The fret size, string gauge, and scale length are some factors that determine how hard it is to bend a string on a given guitar. Microtonal, half-step, whole-step, and even larger bends are common in rock, country, blues, and other styles of music.